Blood Promise
by The-Mighty-Third-Draft
Summary: The bond that Severus and Hermione shared in life translates now that Severus is dead. In the grip of dark magic, Hermione must make a difficult choice. NC-17/18/mature. Contains character death, angst and suicide. Reviews very much appreciated.


**Synopsis**- The bond that Severus and Hermione shared in life translates now that he is dead. In the grip of dark magic, Hermione must make a difficult choice.

**Rating - 18/NC-17/Mature.**

**Disclaimer** - These are not my characters, of course. They belong to Rowling. I am just playing with them ;)

**Genre** – Horror/Supernatural/Romance. – Character death, angst and suicide. Set after Deathly Hallows. Contains **SPOILERS **for **Deathly Hallows**.

**Author's Notes** - This is a dark piece I wrote a long time ago. I've decided to put it back up, because I love it so. Reviews are very much appreciated.

* * *

Blood Promise

Who could have thought that his blood would be so dark? It was almost black, not red at all, as she might have expected. It was coagulating now, dried on the hardwood floor, much more than she would have thought his body could hold. Spread in a wide pool, reflecting the glassy black eyes. She had had to come. Perhaps nobody else would have moved his body. She wasn't sure that McGonagall was convinced of his allegiances, and the thought of his body lying here, rotting, still and silent forever made her heart twist and coil in her chest unpleasantly.

Slowly, she approached Snape, who stared back glassily, his eyes as dark as doll's eyes. His face, now relaxed looked younger than she had ever seen him, and his limp hands skinny and blue-veined made her stomach writhe. In the dim wand-light, she was sure she saw them twitch and was filled immediately with an insane, desperate kind of hope. A sudden up welling of crazy, blind need that filled her, then subsided as quickly as it had come when she reminded herself that this blood was his, the gaping holes in his throat were real. He was deader than the wood he lay on.

Tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear, she swiped at a few, rogue tears that insisted on squeezing out from under closed lids. Reopened eyes took in the gruesome scene anew, and she wondered if she would see this every time she closed her eyes for the rest of her life. Tentatively, because sometimes, you just need to touch to be sure, she reached out a hand. Soft fingertips contacted his cheek, skirting round the bloodstains. The skin depressed under her touch, and sprang back into place when she removed the pressure.

Tears shivered down her face as she let her fingers slide up into his hair, stringy and greasy strands that fell over her fingers heavily. On her palm, the healed scar that he had cut into her flesh himself so many stolen months before, twinged vaguely. She dropped her head then, the knot in her throat so tight she couldn't fight it any longer. She let the tears come. So cold, she thought. But not as cold as she had expected...you'd think he'd just been out in a cold wind. His skin was chilly but not cold. She cupped his skull in her hand, her face twisted in grief under the hand that covered it.

'Please-' she heard herself say, not quite knowing why. It was the only sentiment that she could think of that fitted. 'Please-' it came out as more of a choke.

Taking a deep breath, she tried to steady herself. She wondered if she would ever be steady again as long as she lived.

'I-' she tried to speak, but her voice didn't seem to want to work. She should have helped him. Staunched the wounds, stopped the bleeding...but Harry. She would have given him away.

'I'm so sorry-' she breathed, bent close to his ear in the irrational hope that he would hear her.

'I'm so sorry, Severus, please come back!' it came out as a tide, the words she had not wanted to speak. Desperate, her mind reeling, working overtime, she grasped his still hand in hers, leant her head on his side and wept until she was sure she had no tears left.

oOo

A very long time later, she emerged from the Whomping Willow with a levitated Snape. At the doors, the few students who were still up, or had risen early – and indeed the sun was just rising over the distant hills, surprisingly coldly – watched her pass. There were a few gasps, and a few expressions of terrible indifference. She ignored them, carried on her way to dungeons, because that was the only place she could think of to go. Along the freezing corridor, her footfalls the only disturbance in the silence, her eyes puffy and face pale, she was almost upon the potions classroom when her footsteps were joined by another pair. Softened by tartan slippers. A long hand, thinner and more elderly than she remembered stopped her shoulder.

'He never b-betrayed us,' she said unsteadily, not meeting McGonagall's eyes.

'I am sorry, miss Granger,' she said, to Hermione's utter surprise. She raised her eyes. Minerva was looking away, her gaze fixed on the stones like they were the most interesting things in the world.

'So am I,' Hermione breathed, and her hand went unthinkingly to Snape's arm. She dropped her gaze to stare at the flagstones, coldly aware that she must look a fright.

'He deserved to live,' said Hermione fiercely.

McGonagall drew herself up, but the gesture seemed somehow wilted, as though there was too much weight on those shoulders to allow it. 'So did the countless others who fought and died. Creevy, the under age who foolishly crept back-' Hermione could tell that her anger was directed more inwards than outwards, but still she felt an uprising of fury, '-Fred Weasley.'

Hermione closed her eyes and breathed out steadily, and Minerva's tone softened.

'Severus did what needed to be done.'

Hermione just nodded. She didn't trust herself to speak.

'Would you like some help with him, miss Granger?'

Hermione shook her head.

'I can manage,' she said quietly, 'they wont bury till tomorrow or the day after...I'll be fine.'

Minerva just nodded, and started off, despite looking like she wanted to say something else. When she did stop, Hermione was expecting it, and the question.

'You...loved him,' she said. It was a statement. 'Albus never said anything because...he saw how happy you made him. It was one of his more...selfless deeds where Severus was concerned,' McGonagall's face twisted, as though she had said something she would rather not have admitted.

'I understand,' said Hermione.

'I am sorry,' said Minerva, and started off again towards the steps, until her footsteps faded and Hermione was once again alone with Snape, who she looked at and shivered, because she could have sworn his eyelids flickered.

In the dungeons she laid out his body on a transfigured desk and closed his staring, blank black eyes with gentle fingers. For a long time she just sat, his hand still clasped in hers, until she was sure she would pass out from exhaustion. She rose shakily, and releasing that familiar hand, she conjured a black sheet to lay over him, and closed the door quietly. It felt as though the slightest noise would be a violation of the absolute stillness that had taken over the dungeons and in fact, the whole ravaged castle. It seemed that Hogwarts was mourning for its losses.

Her dreams were not peaceful, fraught with disturbing images she tossed and turned under the thick, heavy blankets and more than once she woke with a jolt, sweating, her hand itching. Presuming it to be heat rash, she rose briefly to cool it under the tap, buried it under the cool cotton of the pillows' underside and sank back into uneasy slumber, and finally into blessed, oblivious deep sleep.

oOo 

Very, very far below, in an otherwise still and silent dungeon room, something moved in the darkness. A rat scampered past the dangling hand of the corpse. A few miles below in Hogsmeade, the Shrieking shack stood silently, looming like a stalwart sentinel to grief. Inside, dust motes floated downwards, settling after the days activity. The soaked hardwood floor where Snape had lay glittered freshly in the dim light of the approaching dawn. Here and there, spots of clear wood were appearing in the pool of coagulated blood. As time went by, more and more of these spots appeared, until there were gaps the size of galleons.

High up in Gryffindor tower, Hermione woke to a brief second of unknowing, unfeeling peace, which was swiftly overtaken by the rushing memories of the last day. Her hand was itching furiously, the scar standing out strongly, pink against her skin. She stared at it, then buried it under the covers quickly, as though someone might notice some thing that even she could not explain.

The castle did not stir fully until noon. The first few pale, straggling individuals made their way down to the great hall, where the house elves had outdone themselves with an excellent breakfast. In a swiftly transfigured antechamber off the hall, the bodies of the fallen lay shrouded in white bedsheets, and the atmosphere in the room was something like a church. For a long time, as the hall filled, people were unsure as to whether they ought to be respectfully quiet or jubilant in their success. The atmosphere therefore settled at an uneasy truce between the two, and seemed to undulate collectively as food was taken.

Hermione, from her seat at the back of the room, a book propped on her knees that she was not reading but only staring at to hide her puffy eyes, couldn't help but notice that Harry had not made an appearance as yet. When he did at last, a latecomer as ever, the hall erupted into cheering that was at first hesitant but soon grew into a roar of triumph that settled slowly, she watched as Harry was buffeted from hand to hand, shook thoroughly and finally reached his seat beside her, but when Ron joined them, they breakfasted late, and in silence.

McGonagall and the surviving, uninjured teachers organised into teams made of those who wished to help, and these groups branched off to contact relatives and undertakers, to clean and repair the castle, to find a good carpenter. In wasn't long before the castle was alight with new arrivals, come to help in the recovery effort, ghosts whizzed back and forth and even a few centaurs had stayed, braving the stairs to assist in whatever way they could.

Hermione busied herself with the others at the castle; in the repair of the building. Levitating great clumps of debris out onto the ground to be incinerated, or reformed by the builders and set slowly but surely back into place, she allowed her mind to numb. It had to be so. She had only just regained some control over her tears, and the aching, unbelievable grief that was making her almost wish she had joined those fallen. That thought made her feel sick at herself, and her cycle of suffering began again.

So she worked on and on, harder and harder until pain and hunger took away the grief. She let her stomach rumble and her head pound, reveling in the discomfort that could never match the agony of loss. She lifted wood by hand, casting it down off the banisters, and wisely, nobody argued with her methods mostly because they to were doing whatever they felt was necessary to cope.

oOo

The sunset was bloody, she watched it with tears in her eyes through the shattered windows. Streaks of arterial red rent the pink skies, tore behind the streaking clouds. As the sun sank, she too sank to her knees, and wept again in an alcove until she thought she would burst with the poison building inside her. The pain could never end. She would be feeling this every day for the rest of her life. She had not eaten and barely drunk when she made her way down the dungeons again and settled down beside the body of the potions master.

With unmeasurable fury, she noticed that somebody had been in here, and arranged his arms as though he were sleeping peacefully, his head turned toward the wall. Tears pouring down her face from who knows what source was left, she covered him again and resting her head on his stomach, she gripped his cool skin that seemed unnaturally damp. The moisture in the dungeons must have collected on him, she realised, as insane hope once again died in her breast and she sank once more into the cold, dark waters of grief.

Eventually she rose, putting the sheet over his face. She tried not to remember how his eyes had looked so close up, closer she suspected than anyone had seen them for many years. How they burned, intense and intelligent as a predators eyes. Sin, boiling, fiery sin that had begun between them, where they joined and blossomed outwards through her, until every day, every minute all she could think about was Severus. Then as their Seventh year began, her pain and hope, that hope that kept her going. She would see him again. The scar proved it. She could not block the memories, though she wanted to tear them out with her own hands and cast them away where they could no longer hurt her, she realised that they were all that kept this survivable.

So she began to cling to them, playing them again and again despite their pain. When she lay down to sleep, she lay still but conscious for a very long time. Frustrated, she tossed and turned for a while after until finally, merciful sleep came and took her. She cried softly as she slept, woke more than once with a wet, cold face and managed to sleep again.

oOo

The moonlight slanted through the half drawn and barricaded blinds of the Shrieking Shack. The dust had settled into a thin coat which now rode like a second skin, cushioned by some blocking force over the few dots of red that remained where there had been a glistening, terrible lake. The skin shifted minutely each time a new molecule formed another tiny, clean gap, and seemed sentient. Until finally, as the sky lightened in the East, the blood had completely disappeared. The dust fell suddenly in one sheet, throwing up a cloud that would settle back down slowly. It was though the stain had never been present at all.

oOo

Hermione ate slowly, the smell of eggs making her feel quite ill, even though she had slept. Far below, coffins were being carried down the steps, and the families that arrived to collect them stood in tight, black knots, their pale faces visible even from this distance. She stared at her book, unseeing. She was stopped, and jolted out of her daze when McGonagall found her in the hallway. Hermione looked at her inquisitively.

'The funeral will be this afternoon,' she said, and Hermione knew who she was talking about without having to ask. She just nodded.

'Have you prepared the body?'

Hermione swallowed hard. She had never noticed how rough the pages of some books were. She ran the pad of her thumb over the one she was holding. She had never prepared a body before. She shook her head.

'I'll have someone sent.'

She watched as McGonagall disappeared down the wide stairs.

'Hermione?' the voice washed over her, disturbing her from her thoughts. Ron was leaning against a nearby pillar. He detached and came towards her, put his arm around her shoulders carefully. She pulled away as politely as she could.

'I'm sorry, Ron,' she whispered.

'Where are you- I thought – 'mione!'

But Hermione was already gone. A few minutes later, she fell in with the two white-robed medics that were striding towards the dungeons. She couldn't bring herself to care that Ron was watching from above, his face contorted with hurt and confusion. She couldn't bring herself to care. Not now. It made her feel evil, cruel. She should not have played the game she had, she knew. But to be fair, she hadn't known it was a game at the time.

To the medics, she said softly, 'this way,' and lead them towards the dungeon classroom where so many good memories sat, ready to engulf her yet again.

'In there,' she said, pushing on the door, but the sight that greeted her eyes made her breath catch and her knees go weak. Her hand flew out to grip the wall.

'No!' she word wrenched free before she could stop it, because the bed lay unoccupied, the shroud thrown back as if it had been rudely ripped off and cast to the floor, where it lay as lack as the pool of Severus' blood.

She advanced, checking feverishly in every store cupboard, every room, then she ran out into the corridor, up and down, feverishly blasting open every dungeon door. The medics watched bemused as she ran like a wildcat, her hair flying out as she turned on the spot, her face streaked with tears.

Then she was gone, cannoning up the stairs.

She had never run so fast, what if they had buried him already? What if she had missed it? What if they had found his body, and taken it...the traitor, the Death Eater. What would they do to him? To a corpse, just a corpse. Frantic she burst into the infirmary, and was seized at once by Madam Pomfrey, who held her at arms length and looked at her closely.

'Severus' body! Where is it!'

Pomfrey looked confused, 'I haven't seen it, yet, dear.'

Hermione wrenched herself free of the nurse's arms.

Outside Minerva's door, it was all she could do to wait. When the door creaked open, the words were out before she could control them.

'He's gone! They've taken his body...Professor, please!'

'I didn't authorise any movements...' said McGonagall, 'oh dear. You suppose that-'

Hermione nodded, 'they've taken him!'

'Now, miss Granger, we'll find him. Much as I hate to speculate, it is probably either an honest mistake or a practical joke-'

'Practical joke!' squeaked Hermione.

'Calm down, now, miss Granger. Stay here.'

And she was gone, leaving Hermione to curl up in an oversized armchair, close her eyes and hug her knees. How _could_ they. And what would they have done to him, when they found him? This was the very worst in human nature. Hermione covered her face with her hand, her body shaking. She did not see the dark shadow move across the room. She was unaware of its leaving the room.

Searches continued all day. Every now and then, somebody would poke their head round the door and give her an update, which so far had been negative. In fact, the more the faculty searched (in some cases, reluctantly, at least until Harry pointed out how much Snape had done for the effort) the more they realised that there was no hide nor hair of Severus Snape's body. They checked all the locked classrooms, wondering if some sick individual had set him up in one as a disrespectful, vengeful joke. They checked every classroom, every store cupboard, every dungeon down to the deepest level where the black lake sat glimmering, terrible and deeper than any subterranean lake should look. Every pair of shackles, every incinerator, every waste bin. By sunset a team had scoured the castle and the priests had sworn on their lives that they had not buried Severus Snape.

Hermione waited in her room, a small female house elf kept her company. Her tea sat, cooling on the side, untouched. As the sun sank, She fell once again into weeping, feeling that she had done nothing but since the final battle. When at last Harry appeared, and held out his hands for her to take, he pulled her into a hug.

'You never told us,' he said, and she sensed just a little resentment in his voice.

'Would you have forgiven me?' she choked, the first words she had spoken all day. 'I'm so sorry, Harry, I'm so sorry...I couldn't.'

Harry rubbed her back. 'Ron?' he asked softly, in a voice that suggested he was expecting a bad reaction.

'I...I thought...' she shook her head. 'It was Severus, always Severus...he, Ron I mean...Oh Harry he was just there.'

Over her shoulder, Harry's green eyes widened and fixed on the wall.

'You'll break his heart,' said the Boy Who Lived.

'I know!' she sobbed, 'I know, I don't want to Harry...I do love Ron like my brother...but...'

'I understand,' he said. 'I'm sorry, 'mione. They can't find him. They insist they haven't buried him, they even dug up the first grave to find out-'

'Oh Harry...that's horrible-'

'I don't think they want you to know this, but they don't know where he is, or what's happened.'

'Harry,' she whispered urgently, pulling away, 'do you think they took him...and-' she swallowed hard, as though the words she wanted to say would not come easily, 'damaged him, Harry? Do you?'

'I don't know, 'mione. But we'll find him,' he added quickly, 'We'll do our best, for you. He did die for us, after all.'

Hermione nodded dumbly.

'Come on,' said Harry, rubbing her shoulder, 'come have some dinner, Herms? Please? You can't starve up here alone...we're all grieving. Let's at least comfort each other, eh?'

She nodded, her hand tight in his as they went down the stairs and into the common room, where Gryffindors huddled in mostly quiet, subdued groups. The younger students still away, these were only the survivors. Hermione saw too many scarred faces, and smiled at Neville despite herself. He smiled back widely, encouragingly.

oOo

Hermione played with her food more than ate it, and scratched at her furiously prickling scar. She kept it in her lap, unable to explain its activity.

She broke away as soon as she could after dinner to go down to the dungeons where she ran her hand slowly down the empty death-bed. She picked the shroud up off the floor, where it disturbed the settled dust and after a moment's hesitation, she curled up on the bed and wrapped herself in the sheet, where, by the tiny sphere of light cast by a single candelabrum, she wept until there were no more tears to come and she fell into an exhausted sleep. Strange sounds haunted her sleep, curious flashes and once, she woke and was absolutely sure somebody had just crossed the room. She stared blearily at the solid wall, and hated herself for her stupid hope. It wasn't until she'd rubbed her eyes and focused on the floor that she saw the spilled liquid there, glistening wet and new on the flagstones. Blood, she realised with a horrible jolt that made her curl tighter into herself in terror.

She reached for her wand and with a tremulous whisper, duplicated the candelabrum until the dungeon room was blazing more brightly than she had ever seen it. Still, there on the floor, drawing her eyes, were the spots of freshly dropped blood. Shivering, she sat up very slowly, but the dungeon room was silent, and not eerie at all, but for the floor. A wounded animal? She tried to suggest it to herself. Perhaps a wounded elf, they do have a habit of bleeding quite profusely when cut, she thought to herself sensibly. Still, she did not put out the lights, and when she had plucked up her courage, driven on by common sense, she came upright, and crossed the room on shaky legs to examine the floor.

She dipped a fingertip into it, and recoiled in horror. It was still lukewarm.

'Severus?' she called, her voice betraying her inner turmoil. 'Severus!' she called, and her voice echoed off the walls and came back, weakening, again and again. She let her head drop forward.

'Don't torture me!' she screamed out, then, and her eyes flashed fire in the silence. But the dungeon room was silent, and remained that way until dawn.

oOo

Hermione sat in the back row, her shoulders shaking, and her arm around Ginny who was weeping copiously too. Mrs Weasley sat stoic but pale, her cheeks stained with tears, Mr Weasley had clasped her hand in his. All along the rows were the mourners, and at the front of the group were the coffins due to be buried. Hermione tried not to look at them, wondering if any one of them contained the body of her lover. If she had been tricked? But why would anyone trick her? Hardly anybody knew, they'd made quite sure of that.

Again that afternoon, she searched the dungeons, running her hand along the rough brickwork. She checked every room, she blasted the padlock off the dungeon staircase and went down a ways to where she could hear water, and the blackness was so total she wondered if she had left this world and entered another, where there was no light. She returned to the surface, again walking those corridors, her head filled with memories of their clandestine meetings, their stolen evenings and gentle whispers.

She sat down at the foot of a life size statue of Salazar Slytherin, and put her head in her hands, and it was then that something caught her eye. Nobody would know that...would they? She stared at the blank wall, where for a moment reality shimmered reflectively, like the ripples on the surface of a pond. For a split second, she had seen the wide, arched doorway that lead to his rooms. Why hadn't she thought of it before? She sprang to her feet, want ready and said in a shaking voice, her wand trembling,

'Redemption,' she said the password softly.

The doorway solidified, hinges erupting from the stone and wood uncloaking into reality until she could reach out and touch it. While her heart hammered in her chest, she put out her hand and turned the doorknob, pushed...and the door swung open to admit her to a short corridor. An alert listener would have heard the soft crackle of disabling booby traps. Hermione had never asked what they were, because she would rather not know.

'Albus,' she said quickly, being sure to keep her wand still. And the corridor melted away to reveal a smaller hallway, and up ahead, the half closed bedroom door behind which she could see the guttering of a single candle flame.

Terror was racing round her body, fear and shock and shame that she had never thought of this before, but who would expect to find life in his rooms, when she and Severus were the only ones who knew the password? Her knees felt weak, her heart seemed to be trying to pound a route to the outside through her ribs and her skin was breaking into a freezing, terrible sweat as she approached the bedroom door. That single flame fluttered wildly, casting weird shadows on the section of wall that she could see. Her frenzied thoughts settled on one, and one alone. _Severus_.

oOo

She pushed the door. Her heart stopped beating for so long that she wondered if it would ever restart. Then it did, jumping back into life and sending a sickening shock of adrenaline that made her feel feint. She cried out in shock and grabbed for the doorway to steady herself. Her hand burned in pain. There he was. Sitting at his desk like always, his hand moving slowly, scratching unsteadily across the page.

His back to her, he continued on in silence for a moment, before dotting the last sentence. He put down the quill with a weak hand that trembled.

'Sev-Severus-' she choked. Slowly, shakily, he stood from the chair like an old man, and bent almost double he made his way quickly to the bed. Flopping down, exhausted, he lay there, pale grey, his thin chest rising and falling quickly.

His shirt was soaked in blood. Every so often a fresh leakage would well and leak out from under the old rags he had used to staunch the wound, and soak into his shirt. As he struggled to regain his breath, he extended a thin, pale hand towards her. His fingers twitched as though he wanted to gesture her closer, but could not find the coordination.

Hermione jerked like an automaton over to where he lay, reaching the wide bed only just as her knees finally gave out. On her knees, she reached out a hand to touch his skin. Cold and clammy, he felt like he had on the death-bed. Not cold enough to be a corpse, but not warm enough to be alive. She found that his skin sprang back into shape when pressure was removed, just like it had on the bed, like a living body. Was it possible he had been alive all this time? _Without blood_?

Up close, she could see that the dried blood on his shirt was disintegrating slowly, forming tiny clear patches that were soon filled by fresh bleeding. She couldn't bear to think that it might be going back inside him, keeping him alive, forever. Her whole body shaking, she grasped his cold fingers in hers and tried to warm them, half blind with tears she could just see the little smile on his thin lips.

'Miss Granger-' the voice was cracked and rough, a harsh baritone whisper forced through dead vocal chords now forced to become alive. Sardonic as ever. 'Not your finest hour of problem solving.'

'Severus-' she choked.

Snape turned his head to look at her closely through eyes flecked with popped pink veins. He sighed softly, his lips quirking into an almost imperceptible smile that she returned convulsively.

'Hermione,' he whispered tenderly. 'You should see it.'

'See what?' she sobbed.

'There's another place!'

Hermione shook her head, 'you can't be real...you're in my head, Severus. What place?'

She touched him as she said this, running her hands down his grey stomach, her fingers covered in his fresh blood that cleaned off her hands and returned to his arteries even as she watched. Cool hands caught both of hers, his shrinking skin. He wasn't dead, she realised. He was something else, caught between the two states.

'Something called me back-' he breathed, his voice seeming to clear with use. His dark eyes sought hers. 'After Nagini...I went somewhere else for a while.'

'Severus I'm so sorry! Please forgive me!' she whimpered, her hands trailing up his neck to skirt around the open wounds.

'I came back for you, Hermione. You've got to make a choice.' His words made her shiver, and she clung closer to his cool skin.

'I can't! I can't! What choice?' she choked.

'Don't you remember this?' he breathed, taking hold of her hand to reveal the thick scar that ran along their palms, where they had bonded themselves forever. Blood pact, she realised. The blood promise.

'The ritual,' she said softly, running a finger down her scar. She remembered the night that she and the potions master had professed their love, promised to be forever loyal at whatever cost, through life and even death, and sealed it in blood. 'Severus...you-'

'Cheated Death,' he said, his face spreading into a wide and somewhat terrible grin. 'Without the aid of a cloak, a wand, a stone. None of Albus' tricks, I did it. But it's not what I'd hoped. '

Weakly, he raised a hand and slid it into her hair. She smiled a teary smile.

'Of course it isn't! Cheating Death? What were you expecting? A first class ticket to a better place, Severus?' the Granger know-it-all was back, he thought.

'I want to die, Hermione,' he said softly. 'This state is purgatory - without you, hanging between this place and the next. We tied ourselves for love...but now that love is preventing my death.'

'I want to come with you!' she said urgently, 'I don't want to be alone!'

Snape's eyes drifted closed slowly, as if he was in pain.

'I've taught you better.'

'It's my choice-' she protested.

'Then make it,' he urged, his black eyes glittering in the near dark. He reached weakly, and handed her the handle of a knife she had not seen before. 'Cut me free, or cut yourself,' he said. 'I can promise you that I will not hold your decision against you. I want to be free. Hermione, you have no idea what it looks like.'

'Heaven?' she whispered thickly, through her tears.

'Heaven,' he breathed, squeezing the hand that held his.

oOo

The pain was minimal, actually. She had the feeling it would get much worse in the days to come. Leaning forwards, she kissed the cool lips. She tried to make it last forever. She would have to remember this kiss every time she thought of him, every day until she died. When she pulled away, she dried her eyes as best she could on her sleeve. Severus studied her for a moment, before closing his eyes. Somehow, he must have known that it would make it easier.

'Goodbye,' she whispered.

It was like cutting butter, easy. There was no deluge of blood, because what she was killing wasn't really alive. As the knife exited, splattering blood that disintegrated before it hit the carpet, she threw the knife from her and collapsed across his stilling chest, and wept. It was brief seconds before the hand that had tangled in her hair relaxed, and was still.

oOo

A while later in the dungeons, the corpse reappeared with a crack. In the following minutes, the slice across the throat healed and disintegrated into a thin, white line that would fade before the medics finally found the body an hour later. Up in the astronomy tower, Hermione watched the scar disappear from her palm through blurred eyes. She clutched it close to her chest like a last goodbye.

Death was not the all consuming agony she had imagined. As her own blood flowed out over her hands, dripped off her fingertips and onto the flagstones she felt a strange, creeping, chilly sense of peace that began in her extremities and spread inwards. Suddenly tired, craving sleep, the world was a fuzzy, monotone place that faded into darkness. Above her, around her, strong arms that smelled of potions ingredients, dirt and death. She closed her eyes and slipped into warmth, and there Severus stood, good as new in dappled sunlight. He held out his arms and smiled, and she flew into them to drown in the scent of his robes and skin, and was happy.

(END)


End file.
